Jan-Piet Mens

Glancing over the subjects in a spam folder used to be entertaining at times; I got the odd grin on my face once in a while.

The situation has changed for me, though: look at this morning's catch:

How the hell am I supposed to get a laugh out of that? Would you guys please revert to some language I can read? I'm not willing to start learning your lingo.

I was please to receive a copy of the Lotus Notes Domino 8: Upgrader's Guide. The book is contains a good overview of what you can expect when you upgrade to Notes and Domino 8. The book is written by "some of the senior architects and specialists of IBM Software Services for Lotus". The content:

• A Short History of Notes and Domino


• Overview of New Lotus Notes 8 Client Features


• Lotus Notes 8 and SOA


• Productivity Tools


• Lotus Domino 8 Server Features


• Deployment Enhancements in Notes/Domino 8


• Upgrading to Notes/Domino 8


• Coexistence between Notes/Domino Releases


• What's New in Notes/Domino 8 Development


• Integration with Other Lotus/IBM Products

After a useful recap on the history of Notes and Domino, a number of screenshots show you what to expect when you make the move.

A longish chapter on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) introduces the reader to the topic and describes the components that Notes provides in terms of web services. The IBM productivity tools are given their own chapter with a few screen shots. Upgrade planning and coexistence of Notes and Domino versions are discussed in quite a bit of depth, as are the coexistence of Notes with other members of the Lotus product portfolio (Quickr, Sametime, etc.). An appendix with "advertisements" of commercial add-ons to Notes/Domino rounds off the book.

As an overview, the book is a good read for managers who want an introduction into what Notes/Domino 8 have to offer. Admins and programmers want to dig into the product documentation after reading the book.

Lotus Notes Domino 8: Upgrader's Guide is a good read. On the downside, the index is lacking. I checked the word LDAP, a topic which is discussed several times in the book, and it doesn't show up in the index.

Photo: Alex Krivtsov

You just can't beat support in Open Source, and I've proven it time and time again. Here is another:

I thought up a nifty little idea for my upcoming book as regards DNS notifications, so I called upon the maintainer of Net::DNS to help me. He added a bit of functionality to one of its modules, which I only got around to testing late last night.

A little bug bugged me, so I called upon him again and described my problem. After thinking about it (which I should have obviously done to start with), I sent him a small fix. Only minutes later he replied with his own patch that now very elegantly solves the problem.

Total time between feature request and solution: about half an hour.

You just can't beat support in Open Source. If necessary (and if possible), you fix it yourself.

And what is the nifty little idea you ask? Hah! Forget it! Buy my book.

Jeden Windows-Menschen hättest du damit zur
Verzweifelung getrieben; ein gpg-encryptetes, gzip gepacktes pdf

I'm wrapping up the work on my book. The last uncounted weekends have been madness here chez Mens with me ensconced in my office, surrounded by humming noises while I built software, tested database back-ends, set up crazy delegations, ran performance benchmarks for DNS servers, and validated DNSSEC keys. I've been working until all hours of the weekend mornings, adding this, changing that, reorganizing those sections, adding a chapter here and fixing up that sample code. Slowly, ever so surely, the project is nearing the end.

Hah!

When I say the end, I mean my end, of course. As soon as the publisher gets his paws on my work, he'll probably turn it and squeeze it, and he might even make me cry. However, I'm also looking forward to that part.

Several chapters have already been reviewed by the program authors, and I'm pleased with their (sometimes very positive) feedback. I went the whole hog tonight, and sent M. (no: I won't say who that is) an encrypted copy of the whole manuscript. All 650 pages of it.

And who is my greatest fan in this project? Alexandra. She is constantly supervising the page count, and she was most disappointed tonight, when I scrapped a whole chapter.

Ein unglaubliches Erlebnis habe ich im Dialog heute gehabt.

Neunzig

Minuten

Dunkelheit.

Das Museum bietet auch Kulinarische Veranstaltungen im Dunkeln, aber das waere mir glaube ich etwas zu viel des Dunkeln.

Geht hin in die Dunkelheit.